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identical elements of the soil. Truly and literally we are made of 

 dust; but the animal kingdom does not derive its sustenance di- 

 rectly from the soil that would be impossible. Our digestive 

 organs are not constructed for that purpose, and could not assim- 

 ilate such food, though in the great famine of Germany, in the 18th 

 century, the starving millions did essay it only to die in torture. 

 Nature has provided an intermediate agent, vegetation, whose 

 organs are nicely adapted to this purpose. They send down into 

 the soil their sensitive feelers, and pick up such stray bits of food 

 as men or beasts require. They store it away in their granaries 

 until it is called for, and these kind friends are thus the purveyors 

 to animal life. Not only is a man thus directly fed by these 

 natural agents, but, to keep up a constant unceasing supply, a large 

 proportion is sent back to the soil in a form to invigorate man's 

 food. This refunded capital is variously called humin, ulmin, 

 geine. Ulmin, or ulmic acid, is the first formed ; humin is formed 

 from ulmin by the absorption of oxygen ; geine, or geic acid, from 

 humin by the further absorption of oxygen. 



We will describe all these changes, however, under the general 

 term of geine. Under some form geine is essential to agriculture. 

 It is the result of decaying vegetable matter, or, in other words, it 

 is the active principle of mould, and is the direct result of putre- 

 faction. It is carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. It has a powerful 

 affinity for nitrogen, one of the constituents of the atmosphere, 

 and whenever it comes in contact, the hydrogen of the geine unites 

 with the nitrogen of the air, and ammonia is the result. It also 

 absorbs water freely, and this is why bottom lands, full of geine, 

 fail to suffer from drought. The geine attracts moisture from the 

 air, and keeps the plant alive. These salts, humin, ulmin, and 

 geine, were formerly called extract of mould. They are, for the 

 most part, soluble in water. For the sake of brevity, we will em- 

 brace all these salts, ae well as crenic and apocrenic acids, conver- 

 tible with the salts, under the general term mould. So far as 

 nourishment is derived from the soil, this substance is the food of 

 plants. It has been deposited over the clay by the general decay 

 of vegetation, through many ages, and according to the amount 

 deposited depends the value of the land. 



Why it is that plants live and grow, or how they grow is a 

 mystery no philosopher has ever been able to explain. God gives 



